VOSSLOH unveiled its first high-performance rail milling train at an open day at its rail welding and storage plant in Hamburg on September 26. The train was developed in cooperation with MPL.

The three-car HPM1 train is designed to be self-propelled at the work site, but locomotive-hauled between sites, with a maximum line speed of 120km/h, to avoid the need to install multiple signalling systems.

The train is fitted with two 1400mm-diameter milling wheels which can mill at 1.6-2km/h. Vossloh says this is faster than other machines which mill at 0.7km/h. Up to 3mm of material can be removed in a single pass.

The cutting blades are housed in cassettes to speed up the processes of blade replacement, which takes around 10 minutes per cutting wheel.

300mm-diameter face-milling finishing wheels remove any residual waviness after the main rail milling has been completed. This avoids the need to use grinding stones for rail finishing. Metal chips are extracted from the site and stored in a bunker on the train.

The train is built to the W6A loading gauge and is powered by two C18 Caterpillar diesel engines which are certified to the stage 3b European emissions standard and prepared for stage 4.